'Mentality Monsters' knocking on BCL Final Four door

VALENCIA (Jeff Taylor's Eurovision)  - In Bonn, individual is a bad word.

No one player or coach is more important than another.

Ditto for Baxi Manresa. It's okay to have an ego, yet the ego must never disrupt the team.

It's this mantra and the commitment to the collective and hard work that has elevated the play of each.

Surely no one said in pre-season that these two clubs would be contending for spots in the Basketball Champions League Final Four yet they are, Telekom Baskets Bonn and Baxi Manresa, both daring to believe they'll be at next month's showpiece event.

Each must win Game 3 deciders next week, Bonn at home against SIG Strasbourg and Manresa at Lenovo Tenerife.

The selfless, team-is-the-only-thing-that-matters mentality has been Bonn's secret to success

Telekom Baskets Bonn's approach has been working since the start of the season. They have been the best team in Germany's top league, the easycredit BBL, and continue to be, while at the same time the club is a Basketball Champions League juggernaut.

"Our team is a mentality monster," coach Tuomas Iisalo said after Bonn's 76-66 win at SIG Strasbourg this week, which knotted the Quarter-Final series at 1-1.

"It's full of mentality monsters. It comes from our recruiting, but it comes also how we do our daily work.

"Our daily work is more difficult than the games. In the games, you don't have anything to stress about because you've (already) been in the deep end. I think that's a testament to our guys and the training process we've had."

“IT'S A WONDERFUL FEELING IN THIS WORLD TODAY, WHERE THE INDIVIDUAL IS CELEBRATED, TO BE DOING SOMETHING AS A GROUP."

Bonn is a beautiful story in 2022-23. The fans have fallen in love with this team.

Hundreds of their supporters travelled from Bonn to Strasbourg this week to cheer the team on.

"You can still hear them singing over there," Iisalo said in the press conference after Game 2.

"Almost 400 travelled to a game right here and the type of emotions, and the type of meaning that sports and our team, our club and our fans can generate together is something unique, and something that gives the players, the team, that purpose to keep working hard and incredible motivation."

But Iisalo, as if we needed reminding, stresses again that it's a large group doing this for Bonn and not just one or two players.

"Like everything in life, there is no individual performance," he said. "We are all doing it together here: team, staff, management, club, fans and city of Bonn. It's a wonderful feeling in  this world today where the individual is celebrated, to be doing something as a group and as a big goal."

Defending champions Lenovo Tenerife are encountering all sorts of problems against a Manresa club that it beat in last year's BCL Final. Manresa forced Game 3 of their Quarter-Final showdown last night.

Yes, Manresa made it to last year's Final yet they did not retain half of their team. And it was the good half. 

The Spanish outfit lost from last year's team the 2021-22 BCL Player of the Year Chima Moneke, along with Joe Thomason, Sylvain Francisco, Ismael Bako, Yankuba Sima and Luke Maye. Finland international Elias Valtonen began the season with Manresa but is now gone.

Yet here Manresa are, just one one win away from the Final Four after beating Tenerife in Game 2 on Wednesday night.

Coach Pedro Martinez did nearly pull all of his hair out in the last few months of 2022 as the losses piled up but overall he's demonstrated a lot of patience. 

He's worked hard with the team's youngsters, helping them form good habits on the court. He has put them, and more veteran players in roles where they can be successful.

Now Manresa have Senegal's Brancou Badio, who had 16 points in 16 minutes in Game 2, which alleviated pressure on Jerrick Harding, Manresa's star that opponents always zero in on. Latvia's Marcis Steinbergs and Gambia's Musa Sagnia are battling, particularly on defense, while playing hard-nosed, physical basketball.

Had Devin Robinson been with Manresa at the start of the season, he'd be a strong candidate for BCL MVP

The sensational plays of Harding and mid-season signing Devin Robinson, a sweet-shooting forward who is also a dunking machine, stand out, yet the toughness of unheralded players like Babatunde Olumuyiwa, Juampi Vaulet and Guillem Jou, and the experience and clutch shooting of Poland great Adam Waczynski, are also making a difference.

If anything, Martinez has done an even better job coaching the club this season.

Unlike Bonn, Manresa have a battle on their hands just to stay in the Spanish top flight next season. They are just one game above the relegation zone in the Liga Endesa.

That is where their attention is now, on Sunday's domestic league game against Coviran Granada, even while all of their supporters are wholly excited about the possibility of reaching the BCL Final Four a second straight year.

What is true about both teams, Bonn and Manresa, is that success only comes if everyone is pulling in the same direction.

It's not just one or two individuals making the teams competitive. It's the collective. In basketball, there is no "i" in team.

Jeff Taylor
FIBA

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